It was only a short time back that TV personality Rachel Maddow accused One American News of being a paid Russian propaganda machine.
Now she says her statements were hyperbole and cannot be proven right or wrong.
The stunning claim was revealed in a report from the ZeroHedge blog.
The report provided an update on the lawsuit by OAN against Maddow, who said back then that OAN “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”
“According to Culttture, her lawyers argued in a recent motion that ‘…the liberal host was clearly offering up her ‘own unique expression’ of her views to capture what she saw as the ‘ridiculous’ nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false,'” the report said.
The case had been brought because of Maddow’s claim that, “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda.”
Maddow said, “Their on-air politics reporter (Kristian Rouz) is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”
The blog revealed that UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries provided testimony that, “It is very unlikely that an average or reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of opinion.”
The OAN defamation case was filed in federal court in San Diego.
OAN claims in its lawsuit that Maddow’s comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles Herring accused Comcast of censorship. The suit said that Comcast refused to carry its channel because “counters the liberal politics of Comcast’s own news channel, MSNBC.”
The blog reported, “It was about a week after Herring emailed a Comcast executive when Maddow opened her show by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN employee also worked for Sputnik News, which has ties to the Russian government.”
“Maddow said: ‘In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.’
“Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate a Russian hoax that didn’t exist, didn’t quite get her facts straight,” it reported.
The case put Maddow, her network and its owners on defense.
It charged the defendants “knew this statement was false and that they acted maliciously and recklessly in making it.”
According to Law and Crime, the $10 million lawsuit alleges Maddow intended to damage the conservative network’s business and reputation.
